


The Sunlit Lands

by Kyra



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: 5 Things, 5 Times, Adventure, Female Protagonist, Gen, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-24
Updated: 2006-03-24
Packaged: 2018-01-16 21:42:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1362757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyra/pseuds/Kyra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five moments Jill Pole was pretty much perfectly at peace</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sunlit Lands

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt from hobviously, LJ meme, 2006.

1\. That first bright Narnian morning, coming out of Puddleglum's wigwam onto the wide fens of the north -- the strong, good air of Narnia already working on her, though she didn't know it. There was the smell of eels cooking and Aslan's breath still lingering around her, the Signs strong in her mind, and a whole adventure before them.

2\. Giving into the witch's enchantment in the room with the silver chair far down in the Underworld was the sweetest feeling Jill had ever known. She knew it was wrong, but struggling against that heavy, convincing magic was so hard. Especially when it felt so deliciously easy to just give in and believe what she was told about what didn't exist: Narnia and Aslan and the sun. To think the Sunlit Lands were nothing but a dream she'd once had. To not question anything. 

Much later, back in our own world, she sometimes caught herself looking up at a woman's particularly charming laugh, turning her head on the street at a green coat, missing something she didn't have a name for.

3\. Coming out into the clear night of a Narnian winter, out of the Underworld at last, safe and free and among friendly faces. She breathed in the cold air in lungfuls and stood beside Scrubb who looked just as grubby as she felt and watched Rilian's face as he looked on his own country for the first time in a decade and more. And later a bath with a faun trotting in and out with kettles of piping water, and the biggest meal she felt she'd ever eaten, and a warm bed at last.

4\. The first time she and Eustace woke in our world to find they'd been sleeping back to back, as Puddleglum had taught them out on Ettinsmoor when they were children.

5\. Jill always felt both shy and exhilarated at the dinners she and Scrubb went to with his cousins and the professor and Aunt Polly. Sometimes she had nothing to say, while Lucy and Peter and Edmund reminisced about their reign in the Golden Age, or Edmund and Eustace started talking about exactly how much weight Eustace was probably able to carry while flying when he was a dragon. 

Sometimes, though, she would mention something about their journey in the North and Peter's eyes would light up and he'd start talking to her about when he rode out in high battle against the giants and compare details of the landscape with her and even Professor Kirke would chime in with something he remembered seeing from the air when Narnia was newborn. It was like the most pleasant geography lesson you ever had, and it made Jill's chest feel full and right.

When the Narnian ghost first appeared to them at dinner she felt her heart start pounding like everything was beginning again. 

There was a lot of talk about what should be done, and who should go, and where Peter and Edmund would find workmen's clothes to wear while they went to fetch the professor's magic rings, but nothing felt right until they were actually going. That's when she felt the deep kind of calm that made her think of Aslan's country at the end of the world.

She tried to explain it to Lucy as they were boarding the train to London, and Lucy smiled and looked out the window. "Yes," she said. "Like answering the Horn," and the train started to move.


End file.
